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On the morning of Oct. 14, 2012, Austrian sky diver Felix
Baumgartner strapped himself to a helium balloon that carried him
24 miles above Roswell, N.M., to the edge of space. Then, with
just a spacesuit and parachute, he made a nine-minute, supersonic
jump that catapulted him into history books as the first person
to break the speed of sound in free fall--at 833.9 mph, or Mach
1.24--without mechanical intervention.

This multimillion-dollar stunt wasn't funded by NASA or SpaceX.
No, this spectacle, seven years in the making, was the work of
Red Bull. The energy-drink giant's "Stratos" campaign resulted in
the most-watched YouTube live stream of all
time (8 million concurrent views), a global broadcast seen
in more than 50 countries and a documentary, Space Dive,
produced by Red Bull with National Geographic Channel and the
BBC.

But marketing
efforts don't need to change history to be effective. The most
innovative campaigns push boundaries in simple yet clever ways
that can captivate audiences--consumers, the media and
competitors alike--and change the way they think about a brand or
concept. With that in mind, Entrepreneur searched for
the most brilliant strategies from startups,
corporations and charities in 2012, and asked experts to identify
what made them so great. Here are our favorites.

Johnson & Johnson hired powerhouse New York City marketing
agency JWT to create the augmented-reality Magic Vision app for Band-Aid's Muppet-theme
bandages. Once the app has been downloaded to a
smartphone, it can be used to scan a bandage and unlock cute
animations featuring Kermit and friends. The objective,
according to JWT, is to "turn moments of pain into moments
of delight" and to distinguish the product from a slew of
generics that vie for the attention of young kids and their
moms. The campaign has earned more than 115 million media
impressions, and the app has a 4.5/5-star rating on iTunes.

"Expanding on a product's usefulness as an activation device
for technology
has a lot of potential," says Michael Milligan, chief creative
officer of New York City-based JWalk, a marketing agency whose
clients include Lacoste and fitness club Equinox. "It allows
Band-Aid to have a new relationship with their audience and
opens up the concept of healing in new and innovative ways."

Help Remedies, a New York-based seller
of first-aid products, kicked boring pharma marketing up a
notch with What's Wrong U.S.? , an interactive
website that tracks ailments like blisters, stuffy noses and
sleeplessness across regions, based on weekly retailer data.
Additionally, for the month of November the company crossed
into retail, opening a hip-looking pop-up pharmacy in
Washington, D.C., offering relief for all kinds of pain,
from headache pills to a "relationship judge" to help people
with heartache. Live window displays enacting
blister-inducing situations and bouts of nausea attracted
foot traffic; the Night Pharmacy cocktail bar helped draw in
customers, too.

These are "very, very good ideas," JWalk's Milligan says. "I've
always been a big fan of repackaging basics and using design
and communication to present things in a more compelling way."

Lesson: If you add value to customers' lives
with real content and helpful, fun services, they won't soon
forget you.

In a bid to attract Twitter followers, restaurant chain
Mellow Mushroom and Atlanta ad agency
Fitzgerald+CO put together the amusingly unnerving video
series "Follow Us and We'll Follow You." The clips, edited
from hidden-camera footage and set to ominous music, show
actual @MellowMushroom Twitter followers being
followed in real life. Intentionally creepy mushroom-wearing
mascots surreptitiously track the restaurant's fans through
a farmers market, library--even on a paddle boat. The
fourth-wall-shattering campaign got thousands of likes on
Facebook and was featured in a write-up in The New York
Times.

Ryan Berman, founder and chief creative officer at San
Diego-based i.d.e.a., who has worked on campaigns for everyone
from Subway to UNICEF to Ringling Bros.,
chalks up the promotion's success to an understanding of
what makes social media aficionados tick: personal
attention. "Many users on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
believe they are the star of their very own reality TV
show," he jokes. "Those types of people … would probably
love to be stalked by an oversized mushroom."

Lesson: The best way to drum up viral views
and win over fans in social media is by engaging people both
online and offline--and making them the stars of your show.

With a couple of attention-grabbing guerrilla stunts, IKEA
drove home the point that its products can spruce up even the
tiniest of spaces. The furniture company has set up living
areas on subway platforms, in narrow urban alleyways--even
underneath outdoor staircases in Tokyo. Most prominently, it
constructed a fully furnished 581-square-foot apartment in a
Paris Metro station, where five volunteers lived for six days.
The "small spaces" idea was brought to life digitally via
SmallestStoreintheWorld.com, a 10.5 x
8.8 cm pixel web banner containing a fully functional
catalog and shopping portal.

"Just like a picture being worth a thousand words, this is an
excellent example of how to show off usefulness in a place with
a high-density population," says Matt Murphy, CEO of Fusion92,
a Chicago marketing agency that has worked with Disney and
Sony. "Nothing is like walking into a home and literally
experiencing the product, and IKEA found a neat way for people
to be able to touch and feel and see how the furniture can be
used."

Lesson: Demonstrate the value of your product
by bringing it directly to where consumers happen to be. You'll
be that much closer to making a sale.

Over the past three years, Uber, a San Francisco-based
car-service startup, has quickly expanded into 20 cities by
deploying a "where you need them to be" strategy at conferences
and events. In 2012 Uber employed conversation-starting
promotions like an on-demand ice cream truck, which celebrated
the company's ability to provide customers with many different
car types, and the President's Day "Ubercade," in which riders
were met with two SUVs and a sedan that swooped in and whisked
them away in true diplomatic fashion.

Ryan Graves, Uber's vice president of operations, says each
promotion attempts to infuse the brand personality into the
ride experience: "Fun and efficient all in one. We like people
to tell stories and subtly include Uber. We believe that every
interaction with an Uber rider is … a chance to turn a normal
user into a passionate evangelist."

Puma devised an in-store campaign to pump up sales of shoes
endorsed by Jamaican sprinter and Olympic gold medalist Usain
Bolt. Customers intending to buy "the fastest trainers in the
world" grabbed a time-stamped ticket upon entering the store,
and the faster they got back to the register with their
purchase, the greater the discount they received.

What's commendable is how Puma was able to create a connection
between the product, the celebrity endorser and the consumer,
says Jason Abelkop, chief marketing officer of nationwide
restaurant chain Buffets. "Generally speaking, most
organizations do a poor job of activating sponsorships," he
says. "They spend a lot of money on celebrity endorsements, but
few take it to the next level."

Popcorn, Indiana, a purveyor of whole grain, gluten-free
popcorn and chips (actually headquartered in New Jersey),
scored major media buzz after unveiling the Popinator, a desktop popcorn "launching
machine" designed in conjunction with New York City-based
viral marketing agency Thinkmodo. A video showing off the
voice-activated device, which shoots popped corn kernels
directly into snackers' mouths with a high degree of
accuracy, got picked up by national news networks and has
garnered more than 20 million media impressions; traffic to
the company's website jumped 2,800 percent in a week after
the release.

"We didn't have a huge marketing budget," says director of
marketing Jeff Dworzanski, "but we were looking for ways to
spread brand awareness and demonstrate how we are innovative by
building a physical device that shows a new way of snacking."
Dworzanski notes that interest in the Popinator was so massive
that the company is considering ways of commercializing it.

Lesson: To get people talking about you,
explore ideas that showcase fun new uses for your product. The
bonus: additional potential revenue streams.

As big as Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo is--global 2011 revenue was
estimated at $10 billion--it's still relatively unknown in
the U.S. So when the company continued its U.S. expansion
last year, adding stores in San Francisco and New Jersey to
its three existing Manhattan locations, it made a grand
entrance, with an advertising blitz that included a branded
blimp and a Facebook sweepstakes starring feline YouTube
star Maru, whose videos have nearly 160 million views.

To heighten appeal in specific markets, Uniqlo cultivated local
interest. Its "People" print and online campaign featured
homegrown celebrities from each city wearing items from the
brand's 2012 collections. In San Francisco, ads showcased 49ers
football great Joe Montana and startup founder Brit Morin; the
New York cast included choreographer Benjamin Millepied and
fashion blogger Leandra Medine. The campaign, says Uniqlo
marketing director Jean Shein, "worked on two levels--as
independent campaigns to boost sales of specific items, and as
a group to give a full picture of the brand to both new markets
and to reintroduce ourselves to New Yorkers."

Lesson: Make it personal, and tailor
strategies to specific markets. Nothing annoys more than
mass-market "spray and pray" strategies.

Samsung
went head-to-head with rival Apple in its campaigns for last summer's
launch of the Galaxy S III smartphone. In ubiquitous
TV, outdoor, online and print ads, Samsung took clever jabs
at the iPhone 5--everything from the crazy queues at Apple
Stores ("All I'm saying is that they should have a priority
line for people who've waited five times," one guy
complains) to the iPhone's overhyped "new" features ("The
headphone jack is going to be on the bottom," someone
gushes).

Samsung implied that Apple might be getting too big to be cool
in one memorable ad that showed kids holding spots in line for
their parents. At the same time, Samsung backed up its campaign
by advertising the Galaxy S III's own powerful features.

John Ellett, co-founder and CEO of Austin, Texas-based digital
marketing agency nFusion Group and author of The CMO Manifesto,
says the campaign was impressive for having the balls to
challenge a beloved brand in a way that actually made Apple
loyalists stop and think. "It effectively used humor and truth
and storytelling to highlight the differentiation in a way
that's getting people to say, 'Maybe there is a choice.'"
Indeed, in third-quarter 2012, the Galaxy S III was the
bestselling smartphone in the world.

Lesson: Don't be afraid to tackle the
competition head-on--even the giants in the field. You could
win over all sorts of admirers.

OroVerde, a German foundation that works for rainforest
preservation, teamed with Ogilvy & Mather's Frankfurt
branch to create the Donation Army. Trees in a pedestrian-heavy
area of the city were decked out to look like a brigade of
homeless beggars, with donation cans and wooden hands holding
cardboard signs proclaiming: "Need money for my family in the
rainforest." The cost-effective campaign solved two common
problems faced by charities: It eliminated the need to recruit
dedicated volunteers, and it solicited donations from passersby
in a clever, non-irritating way.

Ellett of nFusion says the "ultra-simple idea" resulted in
major stopping power among pedestrians, because the image of
the tree army was both familiar yet jarringly out of context.
"The intrigue factor got people to like it and open up their
change purse," he says.

Lesson: Create a visually arresting campaign
and people will pay attention (and that's more than half the
battle).